THERE couldn’t have been a better line-up for Classic FM Live’s first foray into Wales.

And choosing Classic FM’s weekday morning show presenter as co-host was a classic smooth, you might say. He was the ideal choice to host the first concert Classic FM and the Philharmonia Orchestra – the radio station’s “orchestra on tour” – has staged outside London.

It was a glitzy, fizzing affair which had something for everyone, from the dreamy Blue Danube, by Strauss, to Elgar’s melancholy Cello Concerto.

The orchestra was led by Owain Arwel Hughes, founder of the Welsh Proms, and the concert featured tenor Wynne Evans, best known to television viewers as the spoof opera star Gio Compario in the Go Compare adverts.

This was classical music writ large in bright neon lights. Coloured lighting bathed Hughes and the orchestra, while Suchet wasted no superlative in describing both music and musicians.

Violinist Chloe Hanslip is indeed a fine musician who gave us the first UK performance of a rhapsody called Solitude, written for her by Welsh composer, Karl Jenkins.

It is part of a larger work called The Peacemakers and was perhaps too short to give us any idea of the true merit of the piece. But it was beautifully played by Hanslip who was also impressive later in the evening with her performance of Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy.

The serious heart of the programme was Julian Lloyd Webber’s immaculate performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

It was an insightful performance by both soloist and orchestra.

Conductor Hughes clearly has an affinity with Elgar’s music. He conducted a truly superlative performance of the composer’s Enigma Variations at last summer’s Welsh Proms, and at this concert he, and Lloyd Webber, captured the essence of what is a lament to a lost age.

Wynne Evans was hugely entertaining in his performance of E Lucevan le Stelle, from Puccini’s Tosca, and Cymru Fach.

It would be probably be unfair to go compare a Classic FM live concert with the nightly live concerts broadcast by BBC Radio 3, and so I won’t.

But as the fireworks exploded at the end of a rousing performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture there was no denying that Classic FM can certainly put on a show.